


sandpaper

by yellingsounds



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Boxing, Character Study, Farmer's Markets, Gen, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Matt Murdock and his senses, Matt has a Day, Matt is very dramatic but honestly he's allowed to be, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vigilantism, as in there is one reference to Midland Circle, but only very vaguely, sensory issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25152028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellingsounds/pseuds/yellingsounds
Summary: Today, he puts on his nicest suit and stands in the middle of his apartment, feeling the light that streams in through the window warm his skin (too hot, too hot), smelling the unscented detergent thatstill has a scent, Foggy, hearing the billboard outside buzz and hum with electricity that mirrors something Matt can feel deep in his bones. There’s a buzzing in his ears and a humming in his chest and an itch under his skin; this is an affliction he has dealt with for years but today it is louder, stronger,more; this is the price he must pay for the gift he has been given, the gift he never asked for.Stick called it a gift. Matt doesn't always agree.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Karen Page
Comments: 13
Kudos: 71





	sandpaper

Some days, Matt wakes up to sheets that feel like sandpaper beneath his skin.

He started buying silk years ago, long before he could afford to do so, but some days he swears he’s still sleeping on cotton because he wakes up and feels eleven years old again, lying in a bed at St. Agnes with his hands pressed tight over his ears, screaming because the world hurts him.

Stick taught him to control his senses. To tune the rest of the world out and focus on the fight. He taught him how to deal with the constant stimuli, how to keep it from completely overwhelming him—and Matt deals, most days. 

Most days. 

Today, he puts on his nicest suit and stands in the middle of his apartment, feeling the light that streams in through the window warm his skin (too hot, too hot), smelling the unscented detergent that _still has a scent, Foggy_ , hearing the billboard outside buzz and hum with electricity that mirrors something Matt can feel deep in his bones. There’s a buzzing in his ears and a humming in his chest and an itch under his skin; this is an affliction he has dealt with for years but today it is louder, stronger, _more_ ; this is the price he must pay for the gift he has been given, the gift he never asked for. 

He rips off the suit and rummages around in his closet until he finds a pair of sweatpants and one of Dad’s old shirts. 

It doesn’t smell like him. Not anymore.

But it feels _safe_. It feels like he can breathe again.

He gags before he even opens the refrigerator. The milk’s gone bad and the apples are covered in pesticides and the two remaining eggs are rotten and the bread is growing mold and the open takeout container of pad thai has absorbed all these smells and 

  
  


The entire contents of his fridge sit bagged up in a dumpster, and Matt Murdock is late to work. 

“You’re late,” Foggy says.

“You’re wearing sweatpants,” Karen says. 

Matt considers making an excuse, but he’s trying to tell the truth now.

“Laundry day.”

It’s a process.

He lasts an hour at his desk, smelling the meats and cheeses downstairs, before sweeping his case files into his briefcase and walking out the door. They don’t have any clients today.

Foggy calls after him.

“I can’t focus,” Matt says, and it’s true, and he shuts the door with a _click_ and tries not to flinch because to him it sounds more like a gunshot.

Foggy doesn’t follow.

He would have, before Daredevil, before the firm, before any of it—back when they were just two college kids learning to live in each other's presence and this behavior was new and strange and concerning because Foggy didn’t know him yet, didn’t know that Matt did things that were strange and concerning and not new at all. He would have followed a kid he hadn’t yet figured out, a roommate who was still distant and skittish and a little too charming, because he _cared_. 

(He still cares. That’s kind of the problem.)

He would have, when they were no longer Matt and Foggy but MattandFoggy, and then Murdock and Nelson—when they were just best friends, uncomplicated. When the Man in the Mask had not yet reached the papers, when he hadn’t even made his debut. When Matt had Secrets but Foggy still knew when something was wrong even when he didn’t know the cause of it. He’d follow him anyway, anywhere.

(Matt isn’t someone who should be followed.)

He would have, after he found out, after the fight, after they were friends again and partners again and he knew about days Like This and didn’t want Matt to be alone in a world that was too big, too loud, _too much_. After he left. After he came back.

(They always leave. He always comes back.)

He wouldn’t now, though—now that Matt has broken and not quite regained his trust yet again, now that something has broken between them that he isn’t quite sure can be fixed, now that Matt had let Foggy see too much of him because he thought he’d never speak to him again. 

(I’m leaving Matt Murdock behind.)

Foggy does call him, though.

Matt powers off his phone.

* * *

He takes a cab to the grocery store and tries to ignore the way it makes his heart pound, smelling the air freshener and the leather seats. His hands shake as he hands the driver carefully folded bills and he hates it, hates that something so simple makes him scared. Makes him weak. He sits there as the ocean’s phantom hands tighten around his neck, tasting salt water and blood, and listens to its whisper fill his ears with the notion that he is Trapped. 

Matt’s heart pounds and his hands shake and his skin buzzes with am I safe here am I safe here amIsafehereamIsafehereI’mnotsafehere

“You’re safe,” The driver says, sounding puzzled. “I’m just taking you to the grocery store, man.”

His heart thumps steadily, and Matt relaxes, just a little.

  
  


He doesn’t make it to the grocery store.

He’s thinking about just how much he does _not_ want to go to the grocery store, where it’s crowded and he doesn’t know how much anything costs and the fruit is less than adequate, when he hears it.

There’s music playing nearby, and he waits until the cab gets close enough that they should be right next to it. 

“Sorry, could you let me off here instead?”

There are booths set up around the green selling all sorts of things—fresh fruits and veggies, home-churned ice cream, antiques that make him sneeze—and musicians interspersed between them, taking song requests and selling cds. 

Matt makes his way around the market, sampling a bit of everything that doesn’t immediately make his nose wrinkle and filling a reusable bag with jars of vegan kimchi and blueberry jam, trying not to feel too guilty about it. He purchases a french baguette from a table run by two teenagers selling baked goods. They have these cookies, too—little twists of pie crust covered in cinnamon and sugar. Matt buys three boxes.

The woman at the antiques booth, whom he’s quite sure he heard telling previous customers not to touch the merchandise, lets him brush his hands over an old typewriter from the early 1920s. Matt likes the sound the keys make. It’s no use to him, but he thinks Karen might like it, so he turns his phone back on and has the woman, Jennifer, tell him the address of her shop so he can dictate it into his notes app.

He sits on a bench and tears chunks of bread off of the baguette, eats them slathered in apple butter and drizzled with warm honey. Feels the wind breeze through his hair and lets the sounds and the smells of the market crash over him. This is a wave of noise and movement and _life_ , and he does not drown in it. 

It’s a lot, the music and the people and the smells, but it doesn’t hurt him, not like everything else does. He sits there in the sun and the Too Much and feels alive for it. 

The buzzing quiets. 

* * *

After stopping by his apartment and stocking his kitchen with happiness, Matt returns to the office. 

Foggy says nothing. His heart gives him away, though—he’s annoyed. Matt can tell he wants to say something; he keeps tensing up like he’s about to speak, then shaking his head and turning back to his work. 

Karen has no such qualms. 

“Where’d you go?” Her voice is laced with false sweetness. She’s suspicious. 

“Grocery shopping,” He answers honestly. 

“Is that code for something? Foggy, is that code for something?”

Foggy shrugs. He doesn’t voice the action like he used to. 

“No.” Matt places a box of cookies on her desk. “Did you know there’s a new farmer’s market in Midtown? Used to be in Tribeca. Meets every Wednesday.” 

On Foggy’s, he places another, as well as a bag of apricots.

“Balance,” he tells him, and returns to his desk.

“Thanks, Matt.” Foggy sounds surprised. Matt tries not to let it bother him.

He stays there for the rest of the day, working and discussing and laughing, like it’s old times and things are normal again.

The buzzing in his ears and the prickling of his skin slowly return, though, and when Karen and not Foggy asks him to go to Josie’s he declines, telling her he’s gonna head home.

She catches his arm as he’s leaving.

“He’s trying to give you space,” she says, voice low. “Doesn’t want to scare you away, you know? He thinks you’ll leave again.”

“And what do you think?” 

“I think you’ve had enough space.” 

That’s...fair. From her end, at least. But really, Matt thought putting the rubble of Midland Circle between him and the sky was enough space, and look how well that worked out. 

“I’m just tired, Karen. Everything is…” He waves his hand around, trying to find the right words, and realizes there are none. “I don’t know. Next time, though. I mean it.” 

She considers this for a moment, like she’s deciding whether or not to believe him, before nodding. 

“Okay.”

He goes home.

* * *

Fogwell’s closed three hours ago. The lights are off and the floors are clean, the lighter equipment put away. Even still, there’s a man inside—one man who doesn’t mind the dark, who has a key, who isn’t there to lift weights. 

Matt doesn’t always go to the gym to train. He always ends up where he is right now, battering his fists against a punching bag until his knuckles turn sticky with blood, but sometimes he goes just to sit there and pretend it’s 1995 and he’s a kid again, running his hands along the pages of a braille textbook and

Breathing in the stench of sweat and copper and plastic, different but at the same time unchanged, he can almost fool himself and

The sound of fists against a bag fills his ears and his dad is beside him, whiskey and blood and torn stitches and scruff and love; Matt is ten years old and newly blind and his father is his favorite person in the world and

He doesn’t do that today. Can’t sit still long enough; he could meditate for hours but it’d still feel like restlessness in his head and in his heart, this itch he can’t escape. Stillness is an action this thing in his chest is fundamentally opposed to. 

Today he just punches. 

* * *

It’s worse at night, he thinks. Not because of the quiet—it’s never quiet, not for Matt, not for anyone in this city—but because he’s supposed to be asleep and sometimes he even wants to be. Everything is worse because he tries to escape it, just for a minute, the biting cold of living, and the hum of his heart says no, says if you want to stop thinking I’ll make you feel instead, says let me amplify this itch until you give up and scratch it. 

He holds the mask in his hands, rubs the knit fabric between his calloused fingers.

Yeah, he can surround himself with soft things all he wants. Can fill his cupboards and stock his fridge, can bask in the warmth of music, can taste the sweet notes on his tongue.

But the best way to dull this pain is to give it to someone else. Someone who deserves it.

(And doesn’t he deserve it? Shouldn’t he suffer for all the suffering he’s caused?)

Matt pulls the mask over his eyes. 

The world hurts him, so he hurts it back. 

  
  


Some days, Matt Murdock wakes up and wants to tear himself apart.

  
  



End file.
